Marc Henri Benoist, known as Marco de Gastyne, was born in Paris XVII where he died on November 8, 1982. He was a French painter, who became director.

Son of the writer Jules Benoist, better known as Jules de Gastyne, and the brother of the chief editor Guy de Gastyne, he studied painting (first Prix de Rome in 1911) , and is admitted as a boarder at Villa Medici from 1911 to 1913.

In 1914, he married Mary Christian, opera singer, with whom he had a daughter and whom he divorced after 10 years.

He then turned to the cinema, first as a director for René Le Somptier, Germaine Dulac or Robert Boudrioz1, then became director from 1922.

In 1924, he remarried with Choura Milé na, of Russian origin, which he used in his films. During this time, he toured La Chà ¢ telaine du Liban with Arlette Marchal (1926) and The Wonderful Life of Joan of Arc with Simone Genevois (1929).

In 1930, A Beautiful Bitch, her first talking movie, was a commercial success, but was not be repeated later. He abandoned the cinema in the late 1930s, returned to painting, then made short films from 1945.

In 1954, he filmed in Egypt, The Mask of Tutankhamun (or the Treasury of the Pharaohs).

He resumed his activity as a painter after having definitively left the film business.

He was also an illustrator for several French magazines.